First of all, we all had our interviews with Presidente Ruiz. He came and shared a great message with all of us about changing how we look at some things. Then we all got like 15 minutes to talk with him personally. He basically told me that I'm going to be leaving this area of San Pablo soon which is sad because I love everything about it and all of the people and members of the church are so amazing. . .but changes are always good so that's one way to look at it.
So in our house, we have these things called Quijas or something like that. They're basically geckos but they're everywhere, slightly transparent most of the time but harmless. So what we decided to do was capture them. I used my handy dandy slingshot and some 10 centavos coins shotguns style to knock them off the walls and we got 2 of them put in a plastic water bottle so that's pretty cool.
The funny story of the week. . . So we went to go teach this lady who is super devoted to her church and definitely not interested in our message. We shared a message with her and then asked her if she would give the closing prayer. After a bit of protesting, she agreed but told us we had to come into the house to pray. By then we knew we were going to experience something different. The types of prayers here in Guatemala vary from an almost inaudible whisper to shouting and shrieking. This one was about in the middle but the lady threw herself on the floor and covered up her head with her prayer towel. We were respectful and after got up to leave, but she insisted that we stayed to drink something. As we were drinking this 5-year kid got a hold of the prayer towel and trying to be funny attempted to replicate the prayer. It was so perfect my companion and I almost lost it. Luckily the lady thought it was funny as well so we knew it was OK to laugh.
We also had a baptism this week! Oralia finally got baptized! She's been ready to be baptized for like 2 months but we've just been waiting for them to get married.
But we got that all taken care of on Thursday. When Saturday came we got everything all set up for the wedding ceremony that my comp directed since the branch president was stuck in Xela and sick.
She was so happy and excited to get baptized and The Spirit was so strong! She asked me if I would baptize her which was just an honor and I happily agreed. We had a great baptismal ceremony with all of her family present we didn't even fit in the room! Then they provided lunch for everyone. Elder Garboza ran the wedding ceremony which I thought was a good idea since he's definitely a native Spanish speaker, and I haven't been to many weddings. Unfortunately, I don't think he had either. Basically, the ceremony was "thanks for coming, they're married, no onto the more important ceremony, the baptism." I insisted we take some pictures though to give to Oralia later.
We barely got everything cleaned up in time for our ward activity which was composed of different types of dances from every group in the church: Relief Society, Young Men and Women's, and Primary. There was also a special act from the Missionaries presenting magic... (that's me!;)) The crazy part of the day was we rented these huge stage pieces that weighed a ton. We spent a few hours just transporting them across town in a sketchy pickup truck. While we were loading the stages back up the breaks in the truck gave out and it started rolling down the ramp at the bottom of the picture on to the street. We barely were able to pull some kids out of the way while another member jumped in to drive it out of traffic while 3 people in the back of the truck tried to keep the heavy tables from tipping over or tipping the truck over. The Lord was definitely with us that they didn't break the truck in half.
But that's about the week! I'm doing great here! Just an update on the generals... it started raining again and all of the kids went back to school last week so it's harder to find people in their houses. Did I mention the earthquake from the volcano last week? That happened... Luckily nothing big..but hey kinda cool. I was talking in my sleep in Spanish but not just anything. . . I actually made sense. I was teaching and testifying to someone in my dream about how they can receive their answer to prayer. So that's pretty cool!
Hope all is well. Miss you all!
Love,
Elder Pugmire
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